Monthly Archives: April 2008

The world wide web is “still in its infancy”, the web’s inventor Sir Tim Berners-Lee has told BBC News. He was speaking ahead of the 15th anniversary of the day the web’s code was put into the public domain by Cern, the lab where the web was developed.

The Office of Fair Trading said it will look into whether Project Kangaroo, the joint venture by the BBC, ITV and Channel 4 to broadcast archive programmes over the internet represents an anti-competitive merger.

Five Download – the broadcaster’s internet video service – is to be relaunched under the new name Demand Five. Most content will be free – there will be pre-roll and banner advertising – though some US dramas will cost 99p per episode. There could also be

GTA IV has received a string of near-perfect reviews ahead of its worldwide release. The game is expected to break records for the fastest-selling game of all time and many shops opened their doors at midnight for gamers.

After almost a decade of decline, recorded music groups are hoping a new generation of executives can find a better business model, even if it means sidelining veterans of their pre-digital glory days.

The unauthorised appropriation of UK television content by Zattoo, an internet start-up, has again left broadcasters angry and frustrated as the debate around digital rights protection moves to live TV. Zattoo yesterday launched a service that allows user

Warner says it is launching two Web sites to capture new ad revenue and a younger generation of viewers. TheWB.com will replay full episodes of shows such as Friends and Smallville along with made-for-online shows. The site is set to launch in a test form

Wall Street expects Microsoft to enter a protracted period of “trench warfare” in its attempt to buy Yahoo after the failure of its three-month-long attempt to bring the online company’s board to the negotiating table.

ITV is looking at whether to hand back its eleven Channel 3 licences to Ofcom, freeing itself from public service obligations, according to a report. The broadcaster could potentially turn off its analogue terrestrial stations and make major changes to it

James Murdoch has accused Ofcom of regulating to protect a British broadcasting elite. Answering questions after the annual Marketing Society lecture, Murdoch also expressed wariness about the BBC’s iPlayer.

British mobile users are downloading fewer ringtones and wallpapers as they migrate from colour-screen mobiles to multimedia handsets that include cameras, according to new data from Orange. Text messaging is still holding up well, despite suggestions tha

Yahoo users will soon have one place where they can manage all the services they use on the popular website. The company has begun a mammoth re-engineering project that will unify the disparate services Yahoo runs.

Europe’s game rating system must be strengthened to protect children from harm says the European Commission. The recommendation came in a survey of how Pan European Game Information (Pegi) is implemented in member states. The survey revealed that some nat

Europe has now leapfrogged the United States to become the world’s most wired region, according to the European Commission’s latest tally of broadband usage. However the digital divide still exists as 40 million EU citizens are still not online.

ITV is to make more than 260 hours of archive programmes available for sale on iTunes.
Brideshead Revisited, Cold Feet and puppet show Captain Scarlet are already available; Inspector Morse and The Saint are due later this year. Fans can purchase entire

Ofcom has been forced back to the drawing board over one of its most ambitious changes to the mobile phone market, which would have brought broadband wireless services to a greater proportion of the UK population.

Ofcom has threatened the UK’s major internet service providers that it may be forced to impose a code of practice if they cannot thrash out a voluntary agreement. Ofcom wants a code to give customers better information about the broadband speeds they can

Online advert system Phorm could be automatically blocked by security programs. The controversial system is based around cookies that some computer security firms say they may label as adware and block.

Web 2.0 is set to be embraced by businesses as they prepare to spend nearly $5 billion by 2013 on social networking tools. Over half of the companies in North America and Europe see Web 2.0 as a priority for next year, a report says.